Potty talk

Loyal readers of this space (hi, Mom!) might remember I wrote last time about a milestone in child-rearing and the word "poopybutt." Today, I write about another milestone in child-rearing that involves poop on butts.

That's right: After eight years, Belle and I have changed our last dirty diaper.

Thank you, Molly Matthews, for all of your help.

We had been dreaming about this moment but it happened so suddenly. Our youngest had shown interest in using the bathroom but we hadn't yet mustered the energy to begin full-on potty training. And then her daycare told us its latest "Potty-Training Boot Camp" was approaching and she would be a good candidate. 

At the conclusion of the one-week program, we were told, she would wake up from her Friday nap and have a diaper retirement party. From that point on, we were only to put her in a diaper for a nap or at bedtime. I'm pretty sure it wasn't coincidental that this particular Friday was the one before Memorial Day weekend, giving her extra time to work out the kinks at home. Still, daycare had us at "we'll potty-train her." 

The concept of changing diapers did not faze me prior to having children, although I was worried about getting peed/pooped on. But then my oldest had that meconium diaper in the hospital and I quickly became an expert, even if I still got peed on occasionally.

Like most parents, we've changed diapers in the backs (and fronts) of cars, in restaurants, in public bathrooms up and down the East Coast, at parks and playgrounds. We've struggled to keep the kids still as we wiped them and doused clothes in OxyClean after a blowout. We've wondered how someone so little, so cute, could produce something so heinous in their pants. I've emptied our diaper pail thousands of times, the smell that wafts up as the trash bag wriggles free from the bin permanently etched in my nostrils.  

When our oldest was potty training, she used a miniature, plastic toilet with a bag at the bottom. We would alternate reading two books while she sat, one an interactive Elmo story where you finally learn that, despite appearances, Elmo does, in fact, wear underwear. The other is titled "Big Girls Use the Potty," featuring a child named Molly Matthews. Before opening "Big Girls" for the first time, I was very confused how a book illustrating a girl using the bathroom did not end up on some school district's banned list. Turns out Molly's stuffed animal "uses" the potty.

Since then, I can't begin to estimate how many times I've sat on a bathroom floor to read those books, how many times I applauded and cheered a bowel movement as if my child won an Oscar, nor how many M&Ms we've given our kids after a mission accomplished.

Our son received an ultimatum when he was almost two-and-a-half: Either your diapers or your pacifier has to go. He kept on sucking and pretty much trained himself in less than a week. To this day, however, I still have to remind him regularly to watch where he's aiming while peeing. At least, living with three ladies, he learned at a young age to put the seat down. He's also discovered the joy and freedom of outdoor urination, and would rather go behind a tree in the backyard than trudge the whole 20 feet inside to the bathroom.

For our older kids, we were with them the entire time they potty trained. For our youngest, all we really knew was she had circle time daily with the other children potty training. "Use potty, get a cookie," she told us each night that week when we asked how training was going. When she came home that Friday, we looked at each other as if to say, "I guess we're really doing this?" We decided she would wear a diaper over her underwear in the car but otherwise followed daycare's instructions. 

There were multiple accidents that first weekend, of course. We went through five pairs of underwear on Saturday alone thanks to a juice box and lots of running around during a barbecue. But after that first weekend, she's really taken to it, even waking up most mornings with a dry diaper. 

We still have to ask her occasionally if she needs to use the bathroom but more often than not she tells us. The sly smile that crosses her face when she hears the tinkle in the bowl always makes me smile. One night, when she had to go No. 2 twice in a half-hour, she informed me very excitedly during her second trip, "I found more poop."

Our diaper shelf in the garage only has a box of nighttime diapers left and the diaper pail sits mostly empty in her room.

I'm not going to miss the diapers, just the little kids that wore them.

Getting a handle(bar) on life

Belle and I were leaving dinner the other night as a mustachioed man was entering. As he held the door for us, I gazed admiringly at his face. He had almost two mustaches in one, handlebars growing from a bushy soup strainer, as if the facial hair of Grover Cleveland and Rollie Fingers were spooning.

"That is a great mustache," I said with a smile and a nod.

"Thanks," he replied with a smile and a nod.

What do you think Belle did as we turned to our car?

a) Smiled and nodded with us
b) Turned back to get another look
c) Hit me in the stomach
d) You foolish, foolish man

If you guessed "c", you're a woman. If you guessed "d", you're probably a married (and clean-shaven) man.

"I can't believe you said that," she said after hitting me. "That's disgusting."

Mustache disagreements aside, my life has been transformed for the way, way, WAY better since I last typed on these pages 11 months ago. It's been a journey of self-discovery and forced discovery with a lot of laughs, some tears and plenty of TLC. As in the television channel. HGTV, too.

I've learned that when it comes to home improvement, I'm more Tim Taylor than Al Borland. I've gone from a bachelor pad to "The Bachelorette."

(Incidentally, as I type this, Belle is in the other room watching Emily go on the "overnight dates" with the remaining guys. Where else can you find stilted dialogue and cooked-up scenarios that lead to an "overnight date"? Oh, right. Any adult movie ever made.)

It's hard to believe that less than six months from now I'll be a married man. I've never been happier. Yet I always thought that finding The One meant I would finally understand women. Instead, I feel like I beat a video game only to discover there are additional, secret levels to conquer.

Lest I get hit in the stomach again, this is not a bad thing. Like an anthropologist living with the local tribe, I feel like I've been able to see Woman up and close and personal, but finding one answer leads to five additional questions.

Case in point: We went to the bathroom during an intermission of a play we were attending earlier this year. The men's line, of course, was moving much faster than the women's. We got to talking about this on the way back to our seats and I learned something that shocked me: where men spread out and get in line behind a urinal/stall, women remain in a single-file line.

This means that, even though there are fewer stalls in a women's bathroom and, with the tickle fights, it obviously takes women a little longer than men, the line snaking out into the hallway is a bit of an exaggeration.

Our conversation led to my breakthrough discovery, however: I finally knew why women go to the bathroom in groups. Two guys might walk to the men's room in a conversation; once inside, each surveys the room and calculates which line will be the fastest.

But two women walk to the bathroom and see a long, single-file line, so what do they do? Continue their conversation as they wait. It's only natural.

Whether the single-file bathroom line led to the conversations or the conversations led to the single-file line is a chicken-and-egg conundrum that we'll never be able to conclusively answer.  

What I do know is, mustaches are disgusting.